Comment of the week: Remembering the Uptown

For the longest time now, I’ve pondered the idea of running a “Comment of the week” blogpost on weekends. There are some inherent risks of running such a series, which I won’t encourage by mentioning, but we’ll see how this goes.

I just felt this blog receives so many fine comments that I should share at least one of them for readers who might have missed it during the week. (Don’t tell anyone, but this also gives me a little time to prep the next blog post, which is another installment of The Roving Mike.)

This week’s comment comes from the blog post about the Rivoli/Uptown theater. Reader “eli” shared his experiences at the theater, which is long gone. I’m sure quite a few readers have similar experiences at other Houston theaters, as well.

I remeber the Uptown, the Iris and the Texan was around the corner…or…thru the penny arcade that looped thru the buildings. They had the “Bear Shoot”, the mechanicle boxers. the little bandstand with a miniature band that would be animated when someone plugged a nickle in the juke box. The Horowitz theaters were a grand place for us kids to be on the weekends. The movies were nine cents and were always a double feature with a cartoon of Disneys or Warner Brothers or Merry Melodies, lots of previews of coming attractions and a serial of Superman, Don Winslow of the Navy, Flash Gordon or some other hero of the era. Sometimes they had the sing along and you had to “follow the bouncing ball” that bounced off the words you were supposed to sing.

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I’ve had a lot of e-mails forwarded to me these last couple of weeks that contain photos of Houston’s past. I recognized quite a few of the photos since some of them came from the blog!

If you happen to come across that e-mail there’s no need to forward it to me, I’ve seen it.

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Anyone interested in postcards or Houston history should check out Greetings from Houston: Vintage Postcard Views of the City over at the Heritage Society.

Here’s how the group describes the exhibit:

So much of the history of Houston is contained in The Heritage Society’s collection of over 120 postcards. The variety of images include parks, like our very own Sam Houston Park, familiar structures like the San Jacinto Monument, the Esperson Building and Rice University, and places long gone like the City Auditorium and the Hotel Brazos.

The exhibit runs from July 13 to November 14. The Heritage Society is located at 1100 Bagby.